June 20th

Today saw a sudden rush of activity work-wise when a company approached me to pitch (along with two other designers) for a re-design of their existing site. The site in question was really rather good and my initial reaction was to think it about as good as it could get. Once I’d stopped to think things over a bit I began to see things I’d improve upon and change so I agreed to pitch. I’ll be honest, I don’t like pitching for work like this, I prefer to have some kind of direct contact with the client so I can get a more personalised idea of what they want. It’s so much easier if you can talk things over with them and get to know them a little. I find the whole ‘here’s a brief, come up with something’ approach far too impersonal and it makes me feel like an automaton. They actually had a decent budget too and you’ve no idea how much of an incentive that is for me, I’d give my left nut just to get a client with more than £400 to spend on a chuffin’ site. I mean how much do these people think these things cost. (I’m not gonna get into that argument now, I can rattle on about it until the cows come home.) Anyhow, I made a few notes and decided that I’d dedicate the next couple of days to it.
Whilst I eat my lunch I watched the episode of Doctor Who I’d recorded from Saturday night. Adam & Alex had told me it was really good but had also told me I may hate it as I’d expressed concern over the fact that the new series seems to be becoming increasingly ‘light’. I’m also not a big Peter Kay fan so I had my reservations as to what he may do to the episode (he played the villainous alien thing). Anyhow, I really enjoyed it and I thought it was great. It was camp, it was silly and it was the first show to hardly feature the Doctor or Rose at all. Instead it focused on how an encounter with the Doctor can affect your life and how his world can sometimes taint the world of those who become involved. It was really rather poignant. Even Peter Kay put in a great turn as the Absorbarov thing and made the alien funny in a good way. All in all, a better episode than I thought it’d be. Better than the shockingly disappointing Cyberman return anyhow.
Keeping on the subject of Sci-fi, I also added a few more shows to the list I started yesterday. Terry Nation, of Doctor Who fame, wrote three series of an amazing show called ‘Survivors’ which I’ve been trying to get hold of only to find that it’s been released on DVD. It’s one that I’ve not actually seen but the general consensus is that it’s a true classic. I also added ‘The Nightmare Man’, another I’ve not seen where a couple are terrorised in a lighthouse by some kind of monster. ‘The Stone Tape’ is another Nigel Kneale creation that’s widely perceived as one of the finer moments of British Sci-fi television. A group of scientists are gathered in an old mansion trying to perfect the next generation of recording medium unfortunately they record something much more sinister, something that seems to have lay dormant in the rocks of the mansion itself. Spooky huh? The BBC’s ‘The Changes’ is also a show I’m desperate to get hold of. It’s not yet on DVD so I’m reduced to scouring eBay in the hope that someone out there has popped ‘em on DVD and wants a fiver for ‘em. This post-apocalyptic children’s series shown in 1975 depicted the breakdown of society after people are compelled to reject and destroy technology. This violent reaction and people's subsequent desertion of the country is triggered by a sound seemingly emitted by electricity pylons. The show follows a young girl searching for her parents. Add to this ITV’s brilliant ‘The Last Train’ and I think I’ve got myself a pretty compelling list.

Tea drunk: 4
Job pitches avoided: 1 (In a way, I’ve still got to do it tomorrow)
Shows added to the list: 6